A27017:2098
The Saints' Everlasting Rest
The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is showed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...The saints everlasting rest, or, A treatise of the blessed state of the saints in their enjoyment of God in glory wherein is shewed its excellency and certainty, the misery of those that lose it, the way to attain it, and assurance of it, and how to live in the continual delightful forecasts of it and now published by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed by Rob. White for Thomas Underhil and Francis Tyton, 1650
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
They were of the lowest form, before they came to the highest; They suffered before they reigned; They came out of great tribulation, who now are standing before thy throne: And shall not I be content to come to the crown as they did? and to drink of their cup, before I sit with them in the Kingdom? The blessed souls of David, Paul, Austin, Calvin, Perkins, ⟨p. 835⟩Bath, Parker, Ames, Bradshaw, Dod, Preston, Stoughton, Sibbes, with all the spirits of the just made perfect, were once on earth as I am now, as far from the sight of thy face and glory; as deep in sorrows; as weak and sick and full of pains as I; Their souls were longer imprisoned in corruptible flesh: I shall go but the way that they all did go before me: Their house of clay did fall to dust, and so must mine. The world they are now in, was as strange to them before they were there, as it is to me. And am I better then all these precious souls? I am contented therefore, O my Lord, to stay thy time, and go thy way, so thou wilt exalt me also in thy season, and take me into thy barn when thou seest me ripe. In the mean time, I may desire, though I may not repine; I may look over the hedge, though I may not break over; I may believe and Wish, though not make any sinful hast; I am content to wait, but not to lose thee; And when thou seest me too contented with thine absence, and satisfying and pleasing my self here below; O quicken up then my dull desires, and blow up the dying spark of love: And leave me not till I am able unfeignedly to cry out,1 As the heart panteth after the brooks, and the dry land thirsteth for the water streams, so thirsteth my soul after thee O God; when shall I come and appear before the living God? Till my daily conversation be with thee in Heaven, and from thence I may longingly expect my Saviour: Till my affections are set on things above, where Christ is reigning and my life is hid: Till I can walk by Faith and not by sight; willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. What interest hath this empty world in me? and what is there in it that may seem so lovely, as to entice my desires and delight from thee, or make me loth to come away? when I look about me with a deliberate undeceived eye; me thinks this world's a howling wilderness, and most of the inhabitants are untamed hideous monsters.
They were of the lowest forme, before they came to the highest; They suffered before they reigned; They came out of great tribulation, who now are standing before thy throne: And shall not I be content to come to the crown as they did? and to drink of their cup, before I sit with them in the Kingdom? The blessed souls of David, Paul, Austin, Calvin, Perkins,